Factors That Affect Bystander Behavior in Criminal Situations

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Recommended: Bystander effect in social psychology

This essay will give examples and discuss the factors which can affect bystander behaviour in various situations. Models explaining theories will be looked at along with various studies, as well as looking at the three social cognitive processes by Latane and Darley and explain how these were put together to propose a complex cognitive model. The essay will explain the Arousal cost reward model by Piliavin and Piliavin.

After the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, bystander behaviour was first looked at by Latane and Darley in 1970. Kitty was repeatedly stabbed by a stalker on three separate attacks. During the first two attempts, voices and the sight of lights going on interrupted him and frightened him off but seeing as nobody was coming to her rescue, he went back the third time which consequently led to her death. During the police investigation it emerged that 38 of her neighbours had separately witnessed the attack and yet no-one had intervened or called the police.

It was through kitty Genovese murder and early laboratory studies that led Latane and Darley to introduce the concept of unresponsive bystander and bystander apathy and according to Latane and Darley decision model, a bystander will pass through a logical series of steps before actually offering any help. Therefore a negative decision at any step will lead to non- intervention.

The three social cognitive processes towards the behaviour of bystanders by Latane and Darley that were involved in the passive behaviour of bystanders and these are, Diffusion of responsibility is where there is a tendency that the individual will assume that someone else has taken control of the situation when in fact as a result no one actually does. Audience inhibition is wh...

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...ay be seen in terms of those received for helping the victim , for example the amount of physical danger involved or fame and monetary rewards and as the costs for helping increase so does the probability of intervention.

In conclusion this essay has shown that the cost of helping and not helping differ according to the type of help that is required, which could include personality of the bystander, the gender of either, and furthermore the bystander – victim relationship. Helping can be called altruism but only if the motive is to benefit the victim which is empathic concern. All human beings are capable of altruistic acts, and according to universal egoism, helping is always motivated by personal distress. Humans are capable of biological altruism whereby it is triggered within emergency situations, especially where their friends or relatives are concerned.

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